


IKEA is evil but occasionally brings people together

by flutepiano



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Multi, Swordfights, also poly!allura/pidge/nyma cause i can, ikea is evil, scheming allura who likes Voltron Team Bonding Moments™
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-14
Updated: 2018-02-14
Packaged: 2019-03-18 14:43:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,952
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13683792
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flutepiano/pseuds/flutepiano
Summary: In which Lance tries and fails to build an IKEA bookshelf but builds a kind-of relationship instead.





	IKEA is evil but occasionally brings people together

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Luckythirdshot](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Luckythirdshot/gifts).



> HI ABBEY ILY I'M SORRY THIS IS LATE 
> 
> this was sposed to be for the holiday exchange but i turned it into a valentine's day gift bc i suck at time managing and also school is a paaaaaaaain 
> 
> but it's done! and unbeta'd bc my beta wouldve been kit but kit's stressier than i am so if there are any mistakes i'm very sorry (i tried to minimize them). 
> 
> (and uh yeah happy reading?? i guess?????? how do ppl end off notes how do yall do this)

I bought a bookshelf. It was from IKEA. I had absolutely no idea how to build a bookshelf.

 

So there was Plan A: Call Hunk, because logically, an engineer major _should_ ’ve been able to build a bookshelf, right? Plus, he lived with Keith, who broke a household appliance or piece of furniture every two weeks or so. Logic checked out? Logic checked out.

 

“Hello?”

 

“Hunk! Buddy, best-best friend, bestie, biffle—”

 

“Oh, you did _not_ just call me _biffle_.”

 

I made a face at that, because—well. I had, in one of the most unfortunate ways I could’ve said it, but I was stubborn and stuck with biffle.

 

“Please, _biffle_ —anyway, Hunk, light of my life—”

 

“What do you need?” Hunk sighed. “I can’t promise much, I’m going out with Keith later today.”

 

“I, ah, might need your help?”

 

“I’m sorry, Lance, I can’t,” he said, and I swore I could see him shaking his head. “Not if it’s that IKEA bookshelf you wanted my help with. Keith wants us to go—”

 

“—And I want us to go _now_ ,” Keith’s voice cut in over Hunk’s startled yelp. “Plus, IKEA is _evil_. Bye Lance.”

 

I sighed and moved onto Plan B.

 

“Pidge! Buddy, light of my life, second-best bestie—”

 

“Ex _cuse_ me, _second_ -best? I’m sorry, _who_ exactly made 2AM emergency ice cream trips to 7/11 for your breakups? Who was it? Your _second-best friend_? Who saved you from faceplanting into the pavement when you tried to impress Nyma and Allura the first time you met? We’re going out for dinner in like twenty, by the way, so say whatever you have to say fast. ”

 

I steadily inched away from the phone, cringing a bit, ‘cause yeah, I deserved that.

 

“Okay, sorry, sorry, best friend—Pidge, I—”

 

“—need a favour, I know,” Pidge finished.

 

“... Yes. Y’know that IKEA bookshelf I—”

 

“—ordered a month ago and forgot about and that you need my help building? Can’t, the girls want me for dinner and IKEA’s fucking evil. Some other day, loverboy.”

 

Click.

 

And yes, I was miffed at all of the mind-reading, ‘cause how does she _do_ that? But Pidge left me with my last option; the one I really, really didn’t want to take.

 

Takashi Shirogane.

 

Honestly, though, in hindsight, everything seemed so staged and of _course_ it was; Pidge and Keith both mentioned IKEA’s evilness, and it’s not that they were _wrong_ , exactly… actually, that bit may not have been staged. But anyway, I wouldn’t have been surprised if it was Allura trying to force another one of her “bonding moments.”

 

The first one we had was terrible. I should’ve aced it! I should’ve _dominated_ at Twister; my mom didn’t put me into gymnastics when I was little to _fail_ at _Twister_ , but the problem was all Shiro and his dumb face.

 

(It wasn’t. But I’m complaining, so let me live.)

 

See, in high school—that’s when we met, that’s when Allura tried out her bonding moment—we all had nicknames. I was Blue, Keith was Red, Hunk was Yellow, Pidge was Green, so we exploited this when we didn’t want to put a hand or foot on its proper Twister colour.

 

So we were about five minutes into the game, Coran—who’s Allura’s totally cool uncle with the _best_ mustache I’ve seen, ever, like have you _seen_ this guy? Plus he’s super chill—so he spins the wheel, and it’s _Something Foot Blue_ , I forget which foot but it doesn’t matter. What matters was what I did, and I blame Shiro and his stupidly attractive face for distracting me.

 

Everyone moved their foot (one of them, I forget which—hey, we went over this) to a blue circle, and—actually, wait, no, Pidge kicked me and fell over, so ha, Pidge, shouldn’t have kicked me!—and I realized I couldn’t because Keith’s hand and foot took up the circles closest to me and Shiro’s hand and foot took up the other two that were close-ish (and I already had a hand on myself—ha-ha, dirty joke), so I put a foot on myself.

 

Or, uh, tried to.

 

Somehow, I ended up losing my balance and crashed into Keith and Shiro but mostly Shiro, since it was his fault in the first place anyway, and I… this, uh, wasn’t exactly my proudest moment; I kinda sat on Shiro’s chest for five seconds before squeaking—yes, the amazing Lance _squeaked_ . No, I’m not proud of it, and I’m only admitting it because it was Shiro’s fault because it was _him_ and his dumb face and his unfair niceness that made me squeak an apology and run away.

 

So yeah, I don’t like Takashi Shirogane. There’s also the fact that the first time we met (about five minutes before the Twister Incident), I tripped and fell flat on my face after blurting “fuck you’re hot,” but that’s something everyone’s sworn to secrecy about. No one outside of our friend circle knows.

 

(I hope, at least.)

 

So. I had to call Shiro for that IKEA bookshelf. And of course he wasn’t busy, why do you ask? A bookshelf? It’s been years, and the last one he built was with Matt, but he’ll give it a shot…

 

And then he was in my apartment and I was _not_ prepared for this.

 

What made the whole thing slightly better was that I had absolutely no idea how to build a bookshelf and it looked like Shiro didn’t either, based on his “Hi, I’m Takashi, I’m nineteen and never fucking learned how to read IKEA instruction manuals.” Every so often, we would decipher something but then wouldn’t know how to do it—I asked Shiro and every time, he said he didn’t fucking know, Matt did that when they built their bookshelf.

 

He says that in hindsight, Matt built the shelf while Shiro ate a pack of cheetos and was there as manual labour, which sounds pretty accurate.

 

Eventually, we gave up on the Bookshelf From Hell and decided to wait for Hunk or Pidge or Matt. Allura and Keith were about as competent at bookshelf-building as we were, Coran would probably just make things worse, and Nyma scared the shit out of me. (I mean, yeah, she’s hot, but she’s _terrifying_. This one time she—no, never mind, I’m not ready to tell that one yet.)

 

But the thing about sitting around doing nothing is that it’s _boring_ . So there was this long, cylindrical stick-thing (ha-ha, I know, dick joke, shut up), and I picked it up and went _Hey, this kinda looks like a sword._

 

So I said so, and I stepped back to avoid hitting Shiro and gave the long, cylindrical stick-thing an experimental swing. It made a satisfying _whoosh_ through the air, so I did it again, and again, and again, until I was met with resistance.

 

And to my surprise, Shiro had picked up the other long, cylindrical stick-thing and was holding it in a way better grip than I had mine (but in my defense, I’m a sharpshooter; Keith and Shiro and Matt and Pidge are the closed-combat people).

 

And—look, I know what you guys want to hear. “I thrust (ha-ha), he parried, I blocked his slash, ladadee, ladeda, more technical swordy words,” but man, I’m not a sword guy, I’m the guns guy. So I just… kinda waved my long stick-thing at Shiro until my arms got tired. But it was fun!

 

Then Allura crashed in.

 

We were so caught up in our fighting that we missed Pidge unlocking the door (and to this day, I still don’t know if she picked the lock or if she stole my spare key) and stepping in with her girlfriends in tow. We only noticed—well, _I_ only noticed—when Allura charged at us at what seemed like 300 kilometers per hour, wielding a wooden plank about as wide as Pidge was tall. I did not yelp. (Shiro did.)

 

(Okay, I did too.)

 

Allura kinda lobbed it at us and Shiro and I scrambled to throw down our stick-things and tried catching it, but we failed and the board flew over Shiro’s head into mine and knocked me out.

 

This is the part of the story I’ve only been told second-hand, so I’m probably not the best source, but in my defense, I was unconscious for most (all) of it. But anyhow, sometime, Keith and Hunk and Coran came in. Apparently I woke up and asked Shiro if I was dead and if he was an angel, and in recently-unconscious-me’s defense, he’s _really_ pretty, okay? And it’s not _that_ hard to mistake him for an actual angel.

 

The next part I _do_ remember, because it was the first time I’ve seen Shiro blush. Ever. It was beautiful, it was amazing, it was the best thing I’ve ever seen—even if the effect was a bit lost from the cackling coming from Keith and Pidge and the evil grins Hunk and Allura.

 

So I tried to get up because I had some kind of fuzzy memory of a sword fight before I blacked out and I am _not_ one to back out of a fight (despite being the one to _black_ out of a fight—ha-ha, I’m funny), but my legs weren’t working yet so I kinda fell onto Shiro, and my fuzzy-ass brain thought I fell onto an angel and just stared at him. Definitely not my proudest moment. We literally just stared at each other for the longest time.

 

And of course, said fuzzy-ass brain decided to remind me of the Twister Disgrace and I realized that I had fallen onto someone with a very pretty face and a _very_ nice body and of course my brain overrode my rationality and made me say, “This reminds me of the time we first met.”

 

And then there was silence. Not complete silence, because Keith and Allura had picked up the IKEA parts and were sword fighting again, and Hunk and Pidge and Nyma were trying to figure out where to start with my bookshelf, and I think Coran was inhaling cake that Hunk brought from his date with Keith, but it was pretty quiet apart from that. Shiro and I just stared at each other, and normally I would’ve gotten ansty but I just… sat there. And stared. And didn’t really move, because my fuzzy brain said the moment would be broken if I did.

 

Half of my brain processed Allura asking her uncle how and when he got into the apartment, who said something about letting himself in after Keith kicked down the front door, and that kicked me out of my moment with Shiro. (C’mon… it was a Moment™. It was beautiful. I still tear up sometimes when I think about it.)

 

So, still half-fallen and kind-of sitting on Shiro, I whipped around and glared at the idiot who kicked down my front door. And Hunk, my best-best- _best_ friend Hunk, said, “He’ll pay.”

 

Of course, Keith spluttered, Nyma muttered something about someone sleeping on the couch to Pidge, and Keith spluttered more after that. Shiro snickered, and I think he was going to pat Keith to comfort him but I was still kind-of on him.

 

When I realized, I got up. Shiro took the hand I offered him to help him to his feet, with Keith and Pidge and Nyma still bickering in the background and Hunk chatting with Allura and Coran. It was nice, being surrounded by our friends, even with the evil IKEA bookshelf parts still unbuilt and a bit battered.

 

And if we kept holding hands, even after Shiro got up, well, no one needed to know.


End file.
